This latest work centers on protagonists chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
